Southern Unionist Claims for the Shenandoah Valley

While the referendum vote on secession for the different counties of the Shenandoah Valley may reflect one thing (most especially to someone who doesn’t look beyond raw numbers), deeper probing into other numbers brings about a need to investigate even further. That said, the following is submitted for consideration in combination with my post from yesterday (keep in mind, the number of Southern Claims Commissions applicants has been quickly gathered from resources available on Footnote.com and may not be exact, but I do believe they are very close):

Rockingham County – 22 opposed; approx. 179 claims (see this site for some specifics about claims submitted from Rockingham County residents, as well as this series of books)

Shenandoah County – 5 opposed; approx. 75/76 claims

Warren County – 3 opposed; approx. 17 claims

With the exception of the counties in the northern Valley (Berkeley, Jefferson, Frederick and Clarke all having less claimants as compared to the number that opposed secession in the referendum), the numbers of applicants in the rest of the counties of the Valley exceed (sometimes significantly) the number shown as opposed to secession in the respective counties.

I think, to really see the political landscape here, one would have to consider the census and tax records with regard to property ownership also. Particularly with regard to the lower valley. I did a lot of “research on foot” of Clarke county last year. Indications are the anti-bellum state of the county conformed to the classic four tiered social structure (landed gentry, lower class land owners, lower class laborers, slaves) outlined by many historians such as Newby. Bounce that against voting registration requirements (if any) and voting practices. If members of the first group, and only part of the second group voted, the poll results pass a logic filter. At the same time, clearly members of the later two groups (assuming laborers didn’t own much of their own property) would have little to nothing for claims later. Again, a lot of ifs here, but it sounds like this would require one of those classic “data cube” analysis models. Let me call my sales department…..

Yes, that’s my next step in this, but for some reason, I can’t find my stats that I gathered about two years ago on this. I looked at the 1859 vote for the governor and the 1860 presidential election numbers and “laid them over” the referendum vote numbers and the numbers of Southern Claims applicants. The result wasn’t necessarily conclusive, but it did make it obvious that the raw numbers by themselves mean very little and are deceiving if taken into consideration by themselves.

Then too, there is the unknown factor that still plagues this research. For example, how many people were quiet Unionists and left not a trace of evidence to prove it? Daniel Sutherland did a comparison on numbers in Culpeper County, but Culpeper (of course, Culpeper is east of the Valley) is not Page County and Page County is not the Valley. This is to show that each county needs to be examined on a case by case basis. Throw in the numbers of Confederate deserters from units from the respective counties (and other related data) and the thing becomes even more of a tangled mess to understand.

However, all in all, that’s a good thing as we need to get the point across that the idea of sentiments during the war (especially when ideas are touted that there was a “Solid South” behind the idea of Confederacy ) is an extremely sticky point to wrap one’s head around. What’s even more interesting, if you look at the numbers in the Valley, you have to wonder, considering Stonewall Jackson’s famous saying, “If the Valley is lost, Virginia is lost,” if he understood that losing the Valley to incoming Union armies was not the only thing that he had to worry about.

I forgot to add, Clarke County is a “strange animal” in the Valley, especially considering the tidewater influence in Clarke. I think that county stands as an atypical example of the rest of the counties of the Valley. Granted, there were “gentlemen” in the other counties, and though I haven’t done heavy research on Clarke, I don’t think that the rest of the Valley counties had nearly as many landed gentry as Clarke.